SINGAPORE – A training provider that sued SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) for not paying out more than $1.4 million in claims has lost its case for wrongful termination of contract.

The Centre for Competency-Based Learning and Development (CBLD) has also been ordered by the High Court to repay more than $778,000 in disbursed grants to the government agency.

The centre had sued SSG for $1.4 million in 2021 after the agency terminated its contract to provide funding for the courses the company had conducted.

The current trial concerned only its claim for $591,121.90 relating to certain categories of training grants. The claim relating to the other categories will be heard at a later date.

SSG said it was entitled to terminate the contract because its investigations showed the centre had provided false information in its claims and deceived the agency.

The agency also made a counterclaim to claw back a part of the grants it had disbursed to the centre.

SSG said the sum it sought was a fraction of about $7.8 million it had provided in funding to the CBLD from 2010 to 2020.

On May 8, Senior Judge Lee Sieu Kin ruled that the contract had been lawfully terminated and ordered the centre to pay $778,839.49 to the agency.

The judge had set off SSG’s counterclaim for $793,083.79 against a sum of $14,244.30, which he said CBLD was entitled to get under the contract.

The sum was for training sessions conducted before Oct 16, 2020, the day the centre received a notice from SSG stating its intent to terminate the contract.

In his written judgment, Justice Lee found that CBLD had provided information and documents to SSG in its claim submissions that were “not true, accurate and complete to the best of its knowledge”.

SSG, which is represented by Mr Cheong Chee Min of Lee & Lee, had presented statements from 14 trainees who had attended the centre’s cleaning-related courses.

The trainees were interviewed by the agency between Dec 14 and Dec 23 in 2020.

CBLD, represented by Mr Keith Hsu of Emerald Law, presented testimony from its trainers and statutory declarations made by four of the 14 trainees.

The centre had arranged for the declarations to be made on June 28, 2021, about two months before it sued SSG.

In his judgment, Justice Lee found that in respect of two trainees, the centre had failed to provide training for up to 75 per cent of the course duration indicated on the attendance sheets that it submitted.

For example, the attendance sheets for one of them stated that the course was 14 hours long and was held at a certain venue.

But the trainee said she attended only one two-hour session when the trainer went to her workplace, and that she had never been to the venue reflected in the attendance sheets.

Justice Lee found that CBLD failed to provide any training at all to another trainee, contrary to what was indicated in the claim it submitted to SSG.

The judge found that two trainees did not actually sign any of the attendance sheets that contained their purported signatures.

The judge also concluded that CBLD failed to ensure that its attendance tracking system allowed trainees’ signatures to be collected only on the date of the session.

He noted that one trainee had signed all the attendance sheets for her four-day course “at one shot”.

CBLD had entered into a standard form contract with SSG in 2007.

To obtain funding, a training provider first applies for a training grant. After the grant has been approved and the training has been conducted, the provider submits a claim in respect of each trainee, along with signed attendance sheets.

The case concerned CBLD’s claims in relation to completed training courses conducted from April 2020 to March 2021.

SSG began investigating CBLD in April 2020 and spoke to 21 trainees over the phone.

On Oct 16, 2020, the centre received a notice of intent to terminate the contract from SSG. The centre responded with an internal investigation report on Nov 13, 2020, which included declarations from 184 trainees about their participation in the courses.

SSG then conducted face-to-face interviews with 14 trainees.

On March 25, 2021, SSG terminated the contract on the basis of its opinion that CBLD was “guilty of gross moral turpitude”.